"Hi," Kristi said, shifting from one foot to the other.
"Oh, hi." Ariel nodded, then glanced past Kristi to the door, as if she were looking for someone, at least someone more interesting than Kristi.
"And this is Grace," Lucretia indicated her thin friend who wore braces and had spiked, reddish hair. The woman couldn"t have weighed a hundred pounds. "And this is Trudie." The last girl, seated next to Lucretia in the booth, was heavier-set, had thick black hair pulled into a long ponytail, a smooth olive complexion and white teeth with a bit of a gap. All three managed smiles as Lucretia said, as if surprised, "Geez, Kristi, you look great."
"Thanks."
"Bentz?" Trudie repeated. "Wait a sec. Didn"t I read about you?"
Here we go, Kristi thought. "Probably about my dad. He makes the press." Kristi thought. "Probably about my dad. He makes the press."
"Wait a minute. He"s a cop, right?" Ariel asked, twisting her head and squinting up at Kristi. She was suddenly interested. "Didn"t he crack that case at Our Lady of Virtues a year or so ago?" She shuddered. "That was soooo weird."
Amen, Kristi thought, anxious to end the personal conversation about a time she"d rather forget. Kristi thought, anxious to end the personal conversation about a time she"d rather forget.
"Weren"t you involved?" Lucretia was now serious. "I mean, didn"t I read something about you being injured?" Her forehead wrinkled as she thought. "The way the article was slanted it was as if you were almost killed." She was nodding, her hair shimmering in dark curls beneath the overhead lamps. "Like before."
Kristi didn"t want to be reminded of her close calls at the hands of sicko perverts. Twice already, she"d nearly been killed by a psychopath, and the shards of memory about those encounters were enough to turn her blood to ice. She needed to deflect the conversation and fast.
"It was a while back. I"m over it. So, the special today is red beans and rice, I mean Hamlet"s hash."
But Lucretia wasn"t about to be derailed. She had everyone at her table and the surrounding area"s attention, and she wasn"t going to let go. "I think I read or heard that you died died and came back or something." and came back or something."
"Or something," Kristi said as all of the women at the table, Lucretia"s friends who had been so animated a few minutes earlier, grew silent. The strains of an old Elvis tune ran over the clink of silverware, buzz of conversation, and hiss of the ancient heater as it struggled to keep the diner warm. She shrugged, relegating the story of her past to "who cares" status.
"Kristi"s used to it," Lucretia said. "Lives the life."
Ariel asked, "What does it feel like to have a famous father?"
Pen poised over her order pad, Kristi ignored the knot in her gut. "Quasi famous. It"s not like he"s Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise or even-"
"We"re not talking about movie stars." Lucretia interrupted her. "Just local celebs."
"Local celebs like Truman Capote and Louis Armstrong?" Kristi said.
"Dead," Trudie said.
"My dad"s just a cop."
Lucretia stared at her as if she"d just said she"d become a devil worshipper. "He"s not just just anything." anything."
Kristi held on to her patience with an effort. That hadn"t been what she"d meant, but Lucretia had always had a way of twisting things around. Maybe it was because her divorced parents had hardly had time for her; they"d been so wrapped up in their own problems. Or, maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever it was, it was annoying and always had been.
"You"re right," Kristi managed. "He"s great, but he"d be the first to tell you he was just doing his job."
"How cool is that?" Trudie asked.
Time to end this. "So, anything to drink?" Kristi asked. "Coffee?"
Thankfully, Lucretia and her group picked up their menus and rattled off their choices.
"Two sweet teas, a Diet c.o.ke, and a coffee. Got it," Kristi said, thankful to hurry back to the kitchen. Who would have thought that Lucretia would have kept up with her, or her father? Kristi and Lucretia hadn"t kept in touch over the years; in fact, while living together, they hardly spoke. They"d had nothing nothing in common before. Kristi doubted that had changed over the years. in common before. Kristi doubted that had changed over the years.
"Old friends?" Ezma, a waitress with mocha-colored skin and impossibly white teeth, asked as she filled plastic gla.s.ses with shaved ice from a rumbling ice machine positioned near the soda dispenser. Ezma, barely five feet and a hundred pounds, was a part-time student and full-time waitress, a wife, and a mother of a precocious two-year-old.
"I guess." Kristi took three of the gla.s.ses and filled two from the pitcher of sweetened iced tea, then pushed a b.u.t.ton on the soda machine and filled the final gla.s.s with diet cola, holding the dispenser b.u.t.ton a second too long. The soda fizzled over the top. Sweeping a towel from a nearby hook, she swabbed at the spilled cola and topped off the gla.s.s. "One of the women"-she hitched her chin toward the table where Lucretia seemed to be holding court-"was my roommate when I first enrolled at All Saints, back before the turn of the millennium."
"Let me guess-Lucretia Stevens," Ezma said, sliding a glance toward the table.
"How did you know?"
"I guess I"m just omniscient."
"Yeah, right." Kristi smiled faintly.
"And"-she lifted a slim shoulder-"I eavesdrop."
"That"s more like it."
Ezma laughed as she grabbed the dispenser handle for the water hose and filled the remaining gla.s.ses. "Actually, I had her for one of my cla.s.ses, writing two twelve, I think it was."
"She"s a professor?"
"a.s.sistant."
Kristi was stunned. She"d always known Lucretia was a perpetual student, but she"d never imagined she would actually stick around All Saints to teach.
"And I think she"s involved with someone at the university. Another professor."
"Really?"
So much for Lucretia"s college boyfriend, whom she"d pined about for the year Kristi had known her.
"Well, I have to admit, if I weren"t a happily married woman, I might be interested. Some of the professors are hot!"
Kristi remembered some of her teachers from the past. Weird Dr. Northrup, edgy Dr. Sutter, and crusty, superior Dr. Zaroster. All of them were musty, slightly crotchety academics who suffered from superiority complexes. Definitely not "hot." Not even lukewarm. At least not in Kristi"s vocabulary. "You"re kidding me, right?"
"Uh-uh. I"m tellin" you, the staff at All Saints is something. At least the English Department. It"s as if whoever was recruiting was looking at Hollywood head shots."
"Now I know you"re full of it."
"Well, you"ll see soon enough." Ezma added a slice of lemon to each gla.s.s. "Cla.s.ses start next week. I bet you"ll agree."
Kristi filled her tray. "And so you think Lucretia is dating one of these hotties?"
"Rumor has it. But I don"t know which one. Whenever I get too close, she clams up, like she"s hiding it or something."
"Why?"
Ezma shook her head. "Don"t know. Maybe he"s married or engaged or there"s some rule about the staff fraternizing. Or maybe it"s Dr. Preston." Her lips tightened at the corners. "He teaches writing and he"s bad news."
"I think I have him for a cla.s.s."
"Oh, yeah? My friend Dionne took his writing cla.s.s and was all about him, but he comes in here and he"s just plain rude. Then Dionne went missing."
"Your friend is one of the missing girls?" Kristi asked. "And you think Preston might be involved?"
Ezma was about to say no. But she changed her mind. Kristi could see it in the way her chin slid to the side. "I don"t think so, but I wouldn"t put anything past that guy. The trouble is, no one really believes anything bad happened to Dionne. They think she just disappeared, probably took off with her boyfriend." Ezma shook her head.
"Then why hasn"t anyone heard from her?"
"Exactly! The common theory is that she"s with Tyshawn and they"ve taken on new ident.i.ties. Tyshawn Jones is also bad news. Into drugs, did time for robbery when he was still a minor. Personally, I never knew what she saw in him. Before Tyshawn, she dated a really great guy, Elijah Richards. Was going to school at a junior college, planning on being an accountant, but Dionne started seeing Tyshawn and that was the end of her relationship with Elijah. A shame."
"What about Tyshawn? Is he missing, too?"
"No one ever mentions that, do they?"
Kristi swept around one of the line cooks as he tossed a handful of sliced potatoes into the fryer and the hot oil sizzled and bubbled. She pushed the swinging doors open with her back, then carried the drink tray to the women"s table and heard Lucretia"s voice over the piped in music.
"...I"m telling you, he"s amazing. Absolutely and undeniably amazing. I"ve never...not ever met anyone like him." Absolutely and undeniably amazing. I"ve never...not ever met anyone like him."
Kristi had to fight from rolling her eyes. Even as a freshman Lucretia had been a hopeless romantic. It seemed as if things hadn"t changed. Lucretia was on the verge of adding something else, but quit gushing when she spied Kristi. She sent the other women a silent glance, which they understood, and everyone at the table went quiet.
Kristi got the message-Lucretia did not want her old roommate to know anything about her love life. As if Kristi cared.
As Kristi distributed the cold drinks and poured coffee, Lucretia eyed her old roommate. "So you"re enrolled at A. S.?"
"Uh-huh." No reason to lie about it. Kristi poured coffee into a cup.
"Didn"t you graduate?"
Kristi wasn"t about to be baited. "Just a few credits shy." Jesus, why did Lucretia care?
"I thought you had a thing about writing."
"Mmm. Cream?" she asked the woman who had ordered coffee, ignoring Lucretia"s questions.
"Do you have no-fat milk?"
"Sure. Just a sec."
"I"m teaching now," Lucretia said proudly.
"That"s great," Kristi forced out as she swept away, refilled half-empty cups at a nearby table, then hurried back to the kitchen, where she filled a small pitcher with skim milk and grabbed a dish with packets of sugar and artificial sweeteners. Tamping down her irritation with Lucretia, she returned to the table. "Here ya go." She set the pitcher and dish onto the table near the coffee drinker. "Now, have you decided?" Forcing a smile, she took their orders without further incident and carefully wrote the instructions on the ticket. One woman wanted diet dressing on the side of her Julius Caesar salad, another insisted on no condiments whatsoever on her King Lear burger, and a third wanted a cup of the Cleopatra clam chowder with a side of fruit rather than coleslaw. Lucretia had recently developed allergies to all sh.e.l.lfish, so she wanted to insure that Tybalt"s tuna salad hadn"t been tainted with any of Ophelia"s oysters or Scarus"s scampi.
Hands delved deep inside the pockets of her raincoat, Portia Laurent walked along the sidewalks that crisscrossed the quad at All Saints. It was New Year"s Eve and she was on her dinner break. Already, the night was closing in and the promise of revelry was evident in groups of students laughing and talking and hurrying to the local restaurants and bars to ring in the new year.
At least four students wouldn"t be among the partiers. Dionne Harmon, Monique DesCartes, Tara At.w.a.ter, and now Rylee Ames, whom, Portia believed, had all met with the same bad end. There could be others as well, she thought, though none from All Saints. She"d checked. In three years no other students had been reported missing.
"No bodies, no homicides," Vernon had insisted in their most recent conversation, but Portia didn"t believe it. True, there was no proof that anything suspicious had happened to the girls, and while Dionne was African American, the other three girls were white. Serial killers usually usually didn"t cross racial lines, but that wasn"t always the case. didn"t cross racial lines, but that wasn"t always the case.
She thought about Monique DesCartes, from South Dakota. When Monique was fourteen her father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer"s disease and Portia knew firsthand how that could ruin a family. Monique"s mother had been straight-up p.i.s.sed that Monique had applied for scholarships and taken off, leaving the mother to deal with a rapidly failing husband and two younger daughters, one of whom was still in grade school. Monique, ever rebellious, had run away twice in high school and so, now, was chalked up as a girl who gave up easily and took off. She"d been known to drink and smoke dope and had broken up with her most recent boyfriend a few weeks before her disappearance. The boyfriend, already in an "intense" relationship with a new girlfriend, hadn"t given a rat"s a.s.s what had become of Monique.
It seemed as if no one did. Except Portia.
She walked past the library, where three stories of lights glowed bright in the night. The rain had let up but the air was heavy and damp, leaves of some of the bushes still dripping as they shivered in the rain. The outdoor lights glowing throughout the campus had the appearance of old gaslamps, a nod to the era in which the school was founded.
As she headed to Cramer Hall, where she had lived years ago as a first-year student, she thought about the missing girls. All English majors. All enrolled in some basic cla.s.ses as well as a cla.s.s in the newer controversial curriculum. They"d each been enrolled in Writing the Novel, Shakespeare 201, and The Influence of Vampyrism in Modern Culture and Literature. There was no evidence that the girls had known each other and they"d not taken the cla.s.ses during the same terms, but they had enrolled and pa.s.sed each of those three cla.s.ses. Maybe it was nothing. But maybe it was....
She found herself directly in front of the dormitory. The brick edifice looked very much the same, and she stared up at the room on the second floor that had belonged to Rylee Ames. Rylee, like the other girls, was estranged from her family but her mother"s remarks hadn"t rung true. Nadine Olsen had simply said in her west-Texas drawl, "You know how it is with some girls, when the going gets tough, the tough hitchhike to Chicago and get knocked up." Portia had found no evidence that Rylee had ever given birth, but she had dabbled in drugs-ecstasy, marijuana, and cocaine-and run away several times as a teenager while Nadine tried to hold her brood of three sons together on a cannery worker"s salary. Rylee"s father, the first of Nadine"s five husbands, had only said, "Always knew that kid would come to no good. Takes after her mother."
Great, Portia thought grimly. No one seemed to care what had happened to Rylee Ames.
Which was the same apathy that surrounded the other victims.
"They"re not victims until we prove that some crime has been perpetrated against them," Del Vernon had insisted, but Portia knew better. Those girls had been victims from the day they were born. That much they had in common. Along with the fact that they had been English majors at All Saints College and as such, had taken some of the same required and elective courses.
Coincidence?
Portia doubted it.
A cold wind blew across the grounds, rattling the branches of the pines and causing the Spanish moss hanging from the live oaks to dance and sway, like ghosts in the lamplight.
If Portia had been a superst.i.tious woman, she might have felt a chill in her soul or cared when she spied the black cat scurrying across her path. However, she didn"t believe in ghosts or demons or vampires. She wasn"t even really sure about G.o.d, though she prayed regularly. But she did believe in evil. The dark rotting of the soul where malevolence and cruelty resided in a human form.
And she was scared to death that the four girls missing from All Saints had encountered a homicidal maniac of the worst order.
She hoped to G.o.d that she was wrong.
Kristi couldn"t stand it. So what if it was New Year"s Eve? So what if everyone she knew was out celebrating. She"d had offers, of course. From Mai, just yesterday, which she had no intention of accepting, but also from friends in New Orleans, friends she"d grown up with, friends she"d worked with, and even from her new-found sister, Eve. She"d turned them all down. She wanted to get settled, here, in Baton Rouge, and when it came to the woman who was her half-sister, that was just too weird to think about. For most of her twenty-seven years she"d thought she was an only child and then...out of the blue, Eve Renner turns out to be related to her. It was just too bizarre to be contemplated and all wrapped up in a time she"d rather forget.
"One step at a time," she told herself as she lit a few candles and turned on her notebook computer. Besides, she was on a mission. She had no intention of schlepping tables at the Bard"s Board forever and she was back at school for a reason-to hone her craft.
She"d found some success writing for Factual Crime Factual Crime magazine and had done a few articles for a similar e-zine, but she wanted to write a full-blown book. Since her father had refused to give her access to any of his cases, she"d have to locate her own. magazine and had done a few articles for a similar e-zine, but she wanted to write a full-blown book. Since her father had refused to give her access to any of his cases, she"d have to locate her own.
The laptop whirred to life and, with little difficulty, she found an open wireless connection that she could use. Seated at her little writing alcove in the dormer, its pane window overlooking the wall surrounding campus, Kristi began scouring the Internet for information on Tara At.w.a.ter, the girl who had lived in this very unit when she"d disappeared. Kristi had become adept at finding information on the net, but this time, she came up with very little, just a few articles that mentioned Tara At.w.a.ter. There wasn"t much on the other missing girls either, she decided, as she scanned articles on the Web version of the local paper. But this felt like a story. Maybe the one she"d been looking for. Maybe she"d ended up with this apartment because this was the true-crime book she was supposed to research and write.
Something had taken the coeds away. had taken the coeds away.
Girls didn"t go missing for no reason. Not four from the same small college within an eighteen-month period. Not four enrolled in the same cla.s.ses.